Probing the fate of Europe

Dr. Mordechai Nisanis retired lecturer in Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Among his books are Identity and Civilization (1999), Minorities in the Middle East (2002), and The Crack-up of the Israeli Left (2019).

Militant Islam and Feeble Europe

The trauma of the Two World Wars on European soil left the continent of Enlightenment foundering for direction and balance. Decolonization in Africa, withdrawal from the Middle East, and the rise of Asian powers, contributed to marginalize Europe's international status and influence. Then Islam surfaced, almost invisibly at first, to consolidate the greatest peril to Europe – and the entire West – since the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.

The emergence of Islam as a social and religious political force in Europe, and the assertiveness of Muslim countries in global politics, confronted a Europe confounded by historic guilt, civilizational fatigue, and moral confusion. The ostensible atrophy of Christian Europe, as churches turned into mosques, juxtaposed to its Islamization – demographically, culturally, and politically. The militant Muslim minority in many countries exposed the feebleness and cowardice of how a highly developed culture can experience, drawing upon an insight from Lionel Trilling, "the diminishment of its primitive strength."

In his book L'art d'être français, Michel Onfray considered that an assortment of laicité [secularism], nihilism, and islamo-gauchism [Islamic leftism], had irrevocably sullied the soul of France and dried up its spiritual vigor. The multiple strands of change in Europe were undermining what was once a so-called Judeo-Christian civilization with the launching of the Great Replacement. Meaning, the paradox of a non-religious de-Christianized Europe was witnessing an Islamic Europe unfolding. Through multiculturalism, diversity, and the advance of sharia law, "London was no longer an English city," concluded author Douglas Murray.

Muslim Migration and Terrorism

While Europe developed congenial and beneficial relations with Muslim and Arab countries that assured a supply of foreign workers and petroleum resources, it equivocated toward Israel. Bilateral ties with individual countries were generally positive, though European countries took damaging steps against Israel. They imposed arms embargoes, France in 1967 and Britain in 2024, and assisted Iraq's nuclear program and Libya's chemical program. They courted Iran's Islamic regime, business as usual. They recognized the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization and advocated a Palestinian state, denouncing Israel for declaring Jerusalem – east and west - as its capital. Europe supported the International Criminal Court's guilty verdict in July of the Israel Defense Forces' military conduct in the Gaza war, issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Galant.

The West as a whole had succumbed to the Muslims in a host of ways – imposing stringent airport security measures, permitting extensive mosque construction and mass street prayers, while removing Christian symbols and effacing references to Muhammad. An exhausted West faced an Islamic adversary ultimately bent, not on co-existence and peace, but on victory.

Bernard Lewis offered a stinging prognosis in 1995: "It may be that Western culture will indeed go: the lack of conviction of many of those who should be its defenders and the passionate intensity of its accusers may well join to complete its destruction."

Some thirty years later the trajectory of Lewis's forecast remains on track.

Europe indeed opened its borders to massive Muslim migration, offered rights to millions of people who sustain a religion, way of life, and a focus of loyalty, incompatible with the Western ethos of tolerance, liberalism, and good citizenry. Muslim terrorism struck viciously in Paris and Nice, London and Manchester, Madrid and Brussels, – also New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. The West believed its civilization would conquer the globe, now Islamic universal conquest became a far more likely prospect.

Offering peoples who lack opportunities and resources the possibility to start a new life in the advanced societies of Europe is ostensibly a commendable gesture. When the consequences underline escalating Muslim crime, police No Go Zones, Islamic bullying, and violent anti-Semitism, it seems that generosity has exacted a painful price on the indigenous European population. In the name of Democracy and Christianity, Europe's support for the weak is moral posturing and a mix of nihilism and despair. Nietzsche the genius was on target before his passing in 1900.

Masking is the mark of Europe's disarray. Sweeping and unconditional support for the Palestinian Arabs against Israel is the ultimate moral crutch for Europe's abandonment of the Jewish people to the daggers, guns, and bombs of Islam.

The world community chose to condone Arab threats and aggression that preceded Israel's preemptive strike in 1967. This travesty of justice perpetuates the Arab–Israeli dispute and offers the Arabs a reprieve, if not prize, for their relentless war against the Jewish state. Not brought to the dock, the Arabs become recidivist felons. Is this the way to promote peace and prevent more warfare?

Nationalism, Jewish and European

Israel, the Jewish state, and its political re-establishment after a hiatus of 2,000 years, broke the cyclical model of birth, decay, and death. The Zionist return to the Hebrew homeland was an act of faith, spirit, and resilience. Nietzsche considered the Jews the "strongest, toughest, and purist race in Europe;" and Churchill called them "the most formidable and remarkable race." Mark Twain went beyond qualities and clung to the essence: "all things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass but he remains."

The modern re-entry of the Jewish people into political history took the form of the Israeli nation-state. It gave expression to a community defined and united in feeling and solidarity by history and religion, land and language. Its Jewish sons and daughters were reliving their past and forging their future together.

By contrast, Europe could not overcome the anguish of nationalism, German especially, as they took steps after 1945 to seek a New Europe, in institutions and purpose, from the ashes of war. They preached a future of multi-nationalism, molded by the Brussels bureaucracy, led by French-German cooperation. Yet, the past would not vanish.

Europe struggled with its so-called white, colonial, and racist record. The burden was tarnished, the mission shameful. This called for contrition and compensation. France with its Algerian legacy, and Belgium, Italy, and Britain, with their African legacies – Europe had to atone for its centuries of colonial arrogance. A morally cleansed though mortified Europe would arise to wipe away the sins of the fathers.

Europe and the Palestinian Arabs

A popularized indictment to delegitimize the Jewish state of Israel as a Zionist colonial and racist enterprise, occupying Palestine and expelling Palestinian Arabs, served to assuage Europe's colonial past, and focus attention on Israel's colonial present. "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free" is the war chant mobilizing Muslims, Marxists, and anti-Semites, to join the struggle against Israel. This post-October 7 innovation follows years of the only slightly less demonic BDS campaign to chip away at Israel's existence.

The war against the Jews/Israel on the streets and campuses of the West has assumed fanatic intensity and militancy, spilling over to the universities and political arenas. When Muslims harass, harm, and murder Jews and Christians in Europe, with virtual impunity, this lawlessness exposes the bankruptcy of government.

Thus, Europe diverts attention from its colonial record and joins with the Palestinian charge that Israel itself, and its war against Hamas, exhibits the character of a Nazi regime. For visual effect in mass demonstrations in Berlin, Paris, and London, the swastika intermeshes with the Star of David flag. Portraying Israelis as Nazis whitewashes Europe's Holocaust murder of Jews. The Europeans are subliminally no longer guilty for the Holocaust – which the Nazi Jews deserved. This diabolical reconstruction of history, itself an original Palestinian Arab falsification, mirrors the Nazi barbarism of Hamas against Jewish civilians in Israel.

Europe's moral confusion has thrown a dark shadow over its role as the repository of Christian civilization, or the Judeo-Christian heritage. Justice and mercy have become hollow concepts when it comes to the Jews. Europe chose to indulge the Muslim world by condemning Israel building houses in its biblical homeland, and fighting vigorously in response to the massacre of 1,200 innocent and unarmed civilians.

Israeli Exceptionalism and Jerusalem

There is another side to Europe's cowardice and self-delusionary morality. After all, Israel represents traditional values - combined with its modern 'hip' fashionable bent - of faith, family, and fatherland. It sustains a proud national identity and untarnished patriotism. In the present Gazan War, Israeli soldiers fight fearlessly amid international condemnation. Meanwhile, Europe witnesses as worthy of admiration and emulation the decades-long persistent Israeli struggle, aided by extraordinary intelligence capabilities, against Palestinian Arab terrorism. Muslim terrorist attacks struck Germany, France, and Russia on August 24, while Israel hammers Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Unlike the waning of Christianity in Western Europe, Judaism in Israel is vital and woven into the daily fabric of life. Its upsurge has been very much visible in these days of war. The Jewish religion merges with Israeli nationalism, and soldiers are not alienated from the traditional rhythms of the ancient Jewish past. This mini-spiritual revolution can only be a matter of surprise to the wayward and disenchanted French and Germans.

It does not end there. Israel's exceptional innovative start-up nation breakthroughs, in hi-tech, medicine, agriculture, military industries, and more, send a Jewish message of genius from a tiny country with its less than prodigious population. The Old Continent can look on with wonder and a dose of envy. We should not ignore that the Torah and Bible, as the (Western) sources of law, morality, and prophecy, render unto the Jewish people a historical esteem unmatched in the world. That which for Europe and the West is the problematic and irritating Jewish Question is in essence the unfathomable mystery of the Jews.

The Saturday people and the Sunday people

If pursued to the end, the inevitable result of the combined Muslim and Western war against Israel is the destruction of the Jewish state. Withdrawal from the 'West Bank' and the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – magnified by a Palestinian state and Palestinian refugee return – would throw Israel into turmoil. It could not defend its borders; it would face Palestinian Arab irredentism in the Galilee and escalating Bedouin violence in the Negev. Despair and desperation would cause demoralization and the end of Zionism; the PLO's stages plan would finally overwhelm Israel; wholesale Jewish flight from Israel would signal the calamitous death of the state.

Jerusalem, all of Jerusalem, would fall neighborhood by neighborhood into Muslim hands. This central issue of the Muslim world would finally be resolved through the multiple methods of jihad. Jerusalem as the first qibla [direction of Islamic prayer] would return to Muslim rule. Muslim believers everywhere would be delirious and celebrate in their feverish fashion. The Hamas assault of October 7, we recall, was code-named the Aqsa Flood. The mosque sitting astride the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem provided the religious symbol for the Palestinian butchery of Jews in their homes.

When Britain lost India and France lost Algeria, and America lost South Vietnam and Russia lost Czechoslovakia, the earth continued to spin on its axis and the sun continued to rise in the east. No colossal catastrophe occurred despite such critical geo-political events.

The Jews, Jerusalem, and Israel are another story. Western folly has scaled the mountains of irrational policy-making in collaborating with the Muslim world against Israel. There will be no escape from the consequences. Guilt, if Israel falls, will seep into the sinews of Western Civilization and like a malignant tumor destroy the moral foundations and body politic of Europe.

Muslim thinker Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) stipulated the universalism and obligation of Islam to convert non-Muslims and "gain power over other nations." In the spirit of the noted Muslim maxim: "After the Saturday people come the Sunday people." Alternatively, "On Saturday we kill the Jews, on Sunday we kill the Christians." The tragic fate of Europe and the West, a product of their own doing and undoing, is bound to the outcome of Israel's existential battle.

In 1968, the San Francisco philosopher-longshoreman Eric Hoffer revealed a deep inner secret. "I have a premonition," he said, "that will not leave me: as it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us. Israel must live!"

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